You could start with a Weberian Ideal Type wherein people can theoretically do whatever they want and then identify the limiting factors which prevent people from thinking and doing whatever it is that they want. I would suggest Antonio Gramsci's main distinctions of Domination (control with force) and Hegemony (control of ideas), then work your way own to categorizations which include everyday examples.

Thanks to Jason Jean for your interesting idea. I appreciate it.

Social control is a broad concept, and in some cases, may be so broad as to be useless. To begin, you need to define what you mean by social control in order to conceptualize the limitations and dimensions of this concept. Generally, social control is divided into two types, formal and informal. But even here, the potential dimensions of each are large. There are many, traditional discussions of the concept of social control throughout the sociological and criminological literatures. Most likely, that is what you mean by social control, and most people will not be interested in my critique of the concept and usual methods of studying social control which follow. These comments would also intersect with some of the general ideas Jason Jean points toward above.

One should be cautious when reading those literatures, because there, the concept and study of social control is not highly developed philosophically/theoretically. Without getting too in depth, one of the primary issues related to social control research -- that most people who study social control ignore -- is that the concept itself is biased. Why, you are thinking, do I say that? One could argue that the core aspects of this concept have not been well defined/examined philosophically, meaning that there is an essential aspect of the essence of this idea (ie., its metaphysical properties, and, here, as a social concept, we should have to deal with how social control relates to its social construction, as in applied metaphysics) that has been taken-for-granted and omitted from the study of social control. The taken-for-granted aspect of social control research/"theory" is the assumption that the goal of such study is to define/identify how to make people conform to a set of rules. That approach is missing an essential/core discussion about social control and conformity, and, as a result, the inherent/implicit assumption that is being made is that conformity is, in itself, valuable. But, that may not be an appropriate assumption. The assumption about the inherent value of social control is implicit rather than explicit because researchers/theorists do not openly expose/explore their research questions about social control, and do not critically assess what values are hidden in an agenda of research about social control/conformity. For example, let us say a person (could be any person, perhaps, from a parent, friend, politician, to people who might be judged unfavorably by the label they are assigned, such as dictator, gang leader, etc.,) is very good at getting the mass of people to conform to an idea, and to behave in a particular way -- that is, they are good at exerting social control, and we say that the people who conform are well controlled (socially controlled?). But, is that necessarily a good outcome? It is usually implied in social control literature that people who conform are well controlled, and that people who deviate are not. But, it is entirely possible that deviation/deviates may be produced by effective social control established within or by an "illegitimate" group-- its just not the kind of social control that is "valued." Likewise, when a person challenges a given system of rules, that challenge can be interpreted in different ways. We might say that the system being challenged did a poor job producing social control since a challenger emerged. What we have not asked here, however, is about the legitimacy of the rules of the system being challenged. What if the rules are illegitimate? In that case, isn't the uncontrolled person -- the person who is not socially controlled -- serving a useful purpose by challenging the rules? This observation implies that complete/extensive social control might actually be a negative outcome because it can preserve harmful/detrimental rules and social orders.

In short, one would/should have to link concepts of social control to some discussion of the value of the system being reinforced by the social control practices.....not all forms of rules/order are "good" -- thought they might be useful (and here, a new can of worms is opened by philosophy, the discussion of the relationship between the concepts of "good" and "useful" . . . .).

Thanks a lot, Michael J. Lynch . I agree that the concept is very broad, as you pointed out. What I had in mind is social repression for political purpose. That might be a narrower definition.

Based on lynch, I am of the opinion that the concept of social control, the way we deal with it seem to be out of social control.

My view is that the terms "control" by itself con-notates some sense of some force from the society as a whole to an individuals as a member of that society and that from an individual point of view it could be bad/good but from the society point of view it is generally good. It should not be confused with social compliance/conformity to social rules or order which may be positive or negative from both the society and individuals. Social controls respond positively to social rules that are positive to the society (it exists whenever those rules are supported by the greater mass of the community) . From that point of view I do not see how can we consider it valueless. There is always a net gain to the society through real social control.